Princeton Historian Examines Economic Lessons from the Great Depression in Lawrence University Lecture

APPLETON, WIS. -- Princeton University historian and award-winning author Harold James has a word of caution for anyone who thinks globalization is here to stay. Highly developed and integrated international communities have dissolved under the pressure of unexpected events before and James says it can happen again.

James will discuss his latest book, "The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression," (Harvard University Press, 2001) in an address of the same title Thursday, April 4 at Lawrence University. The program, at 7:30 p.m. in Science Hall Room 102, is free and open to the public.

James will draw historic parallels between previous attempts to "manage the system" through policies that were designed to make societies more stable, but instead led to the Great Depression, and more recent economic policy adjustments that are likewise designed to "tame the market."

He warns that modern policy makers are forgetting history and repeating some of the mistakes made by their predecessors, actions that ultimately led to the catastrophic Great Depression. James will focus on such factors as the restrictions on the movement of goods in the name of protection against "unfair" competition and restrictions on capital movements, such as the Tobin tax, an excise tax on cross border currency transactions.

Educated at Cambridge University and a member of the Princeton faculty since 1986, James is the author of six books, including a history of Germany's Deutsche Bank, which won the Financial Times Global Business Book Award in 1996, and 2001's "The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War Against the Jews."

James is a member of the Independent Commission of Experts investigating the political and economic links of Switzerland with Nazi Germany and he chairs the editorial board of World Politics.